Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 32: 6 Unexpected Lessons I Learned in Lockdown

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

I’ve been thinking about one of the biggest dangers of personal growth these last couple of weeks. The danger is this: we learn a crucially important, life-changing lesson, and then forget all about it and move on with our lives. Any one of us could fall into that trap this year. Like me, you’ve probably had some realizations about your life during this difficult time. Epiphanies about changes you want to make, or simple truths that you want to take forward even once things return to “normal.” But the integration of these lessons and truths into our lives going forward is no guarantee. In fact, for most people, it’s much more likely that nothing will change. Think of that, we were just forced into a giant reset, the likes of which we may never have again in our lifetimes. And yet, most people will go back to living the same lives they were before once the daily stresses, invites, and activities return. We simply cannot let this happen. So what can we do? Well, the first step is consciously taking stock of what those lessons are, and codifying them so we don’t forget them. In this week’s episode I reveal 6 of the unexpected lessons I’ve learned in the last 3 months... Come see if any of mine are the same as yours. And, in the process, write down what yours are. I can’t say this enough: do not move on from this moment in time without bottling the lessons and taking them with you, or all of this pain and struggle will have been for nothing. ►► Claim Growth and Happiness that LASTS. Learn More about The At-Home Retreat… → http://www.MHRetreatAtHome.com Follow Matt @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen @stephenhhussey

hello there podcast listeners and welcome back to the Love Life Podcast with your old pal Stephen Hussey. How goes it then? You know, it's no secret. A lot of us are starting to emerge out of lockdown in various phases. Certain parts of ordinary life are switching back on and in this episode Matt took time to reflect on some of the things he wants to hold on to, some of the new routines, some of the changes in mindset he's made during this time of being stuck at home, I guess. And just to give you one of mine,

which might seem a little weird, but I think during the lockdown period, I have learned to be the value of being more selfish with my priorities. And what I mean by that is I realized because I wasn't under social pressure to say yes to whatever social obligations came my way you kind of had this perfect you know you you never had to have that dilemma and just having the extra space from not attending social obligations that

maybe actually I'd rather not have bothered with. Some obviously give me a lot of pleasure and fulfillment being with family, close friends, important relationships, but just in general, the pressure to be out and just randomly filling up your time doing stuff. When that's been crowded out and i've just been able to focus i've been able to get some extremely high priority things done during this time uh you know particular writing projects and reading certain things that i've really wanted to tackle big reading projects and just getting certain creative work done that you know know, is not urgent work, but work I've wanted to actually take some time to plunge into. And I just realized, wow, it's because I have all this space

where I'm not feeling obliged to fill up all my free time with social stuff. I am just being able to purely focus. And sometimes it's like, hey, it's Saturday night and I haven't been able to purely focus and sometimes it's like hey it's saturday night and i haven't been able to go out and so it's like it's saturday night and i'm gonna sit and do some writing and just you know write a short story or i'm gonna tackle that big fiction book i'm gonna watch that classic movie i keep saying i'm gonna watch and just the extra free time um has been incredible uh for even skills like wanting to sit and take more time to learn languages and you know other little courses i want to do online so yeah that's my lesson that that being able to be unashamedly more selfish with things that are important to me um i want to take that out of lockdown i want to take that

mindset out of lockdown and feel okay like sometimes maybe i want to book a sunday or a saturday night to just learn a skill i've been wanting to learn and be happy doing that um so yes uh let me know what you've learned during lockdown, something new you've done, some change to your routine or mindset. Email at podcast at Matthew Hussey dot com. All right. That's me done now. Over to Mr. Matthew Hussey for his lockdown lessons. Check it out. Some places have opened up. Other places are beginning to open up. And I think this is an important juncture because I've had, like you probably, many realizations during this time. What I'm really afraid of is that those realizations will count for nothing if we just

mindlessly go into the next chapter of our lives without finding a way to cement them. So I thought I'd talk about some of my realizations. And as I do, it might evoke some of your realizations in a conscious way that you can record so that you don't let them go. Winston Churchill once said, men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing happened. Let's not be those people. Number one, chores are more than bores. I have, I suppose, since an early age, even when I was coming up from nothing, had this entrepreneurial philosophy in my head

that the moment you can delegate things so that you can continue to focus on the areas where you're most effective and most capable of growing what you're doing, you should. Whilst that's true, and some people have the tendency to under-delegate, they, at certain points in their life, hold on to too many activities and then they never grow. I think I have fallen into the trap of over-delegating

to the point where there are things in my life that I wasn't doing anymore that meant I lost connection to my own life. I delegated cooking to Postmates and Uber Eats, for example, and doing more cooking during this time has made me feel more connected to food, to life, added more variety to my life. It's just been a good thing.

Not everything should be delegated all the time. Video games, I realized I like playing video games. I got addicted to Zelda Breath of the Wild during lockdown. I haven't played video games since I was a teenager. I gave it up for like 15 years, because I was just like, this is not, there's no utility to this. What's the purpose?

What is it serving? But playing them again, I was just like, this is not, there's no utility to this. What's the purpose? What is it serving? But playing them again, I'm just like, why does everything need to serve a purpose? This is silly. Not everything has to have a, sometimes you could just do something because it's fun. We don't want to, I don't want to be one of those people that everything I do has to be contributing towards some goal in my life. I was still doing too many things because of FOMO, fear of missing out. I think that it's interesting that many of us, including myself, have felt far more comfortable slowing down during this time because we know everyone else is too. If we were being forced to slow down but no one else was, likely we'd feel very insecure about it. I think I would.

That suggests to me that there are still too many things that I'm doing, not because I want to, but simply because other people are doing them. And I feel like, oh God, I should. I want to start making a far greater distinction between things that genuinely add value to my life and things that I'm only doing because other people are going at that pace. I put too much enjoyment off. You know, there are things I've wanted to do for a long time. I wanted to go and travel India for a long time. Didn't do it because I was always, oh, work, the next opportunity, the next thing. And now I can't do it this year. You know, that really should be a metaphor for life. I don't want to go back to putting off

things that I really want to do for enjoyment because there's another opportunity or there's another work project. I wrote down miracle days are overrated. And what I meant by that is during quarantine, I got done a project that I'd been putting off. That was a writing project that I decided to write 500 words a day. And in a month and a half, I got it done. This was something I'd been putting off for a long time. It got done because of consistency, not because of a miracle day. A miracle day would be me saying, I'm going to write 10,000 words in a day and get this thing done. It's not realistic. I rarely ever have miracle days, but I can reliably achieve things in my life in a relaxed way if I just focus on consistency. Lastly, I wrote down, I'm still too hard on myself.

For all I coach people on confidence and kindness and self-compassion, I still spend too much time beating myself up for not living up to an ideal, a standard that I've set for myself, and the people around me have to spend way too many calories telling me constantly to not be so hard on myself. So I still have a lot to learn there and I realize that I cannot take for granted that I am being kind and compassionate towards myself. It's something that I have to practice daily in everything that I do. So those are some things

that I learned. What did you learn during this time? We have to hold on to those things. It's very, very important or whatever realizations and epiphanies we've had, I promise you, we will lose them. They will become not even a memory, a lesson we learned that we simply forgot. By the way, for those of you who want to continue your learning with me, and especially for those of you who are looking at this year and saying, I need to reevaluate what's important to me right now, what my values are and where I'm going. And I want to process for that. I have my at-home retreat that many people are trying right now. And they're going through the entire retreat experience that I normally do live, but from home and getting tremendous results with it. I think this is an incredible year for growth. And for those of you that want to invest in your growth, this is an amazing way to do it. It's the most immersive, deep process I

have for doing that. So I'll leave a link here, check it out. And as always, I will see you in next week's video. And those of you who want to grab that link Matt just mentioned, it's MH Retreat at Home. So if you want to start transforming your core confidence, rewrite the script for your life today, go to MH Retreat at Home and you can start the process to getting your copy of the program. Okay, that is it. We are out for the day. Let us know again what you've learned during lockdown. I'd love to hear your lessons. You can do one, you can do three, you can do a top five. Email podcast at matthewhousey.com. And if I get some good ones, I'd love to read some on the next episode. So yeah, please send them in.

Alrighty, that is it for today from the Brothers Hussey. Thank you so much as ever. Go have yourself a cracking little old day. I'm going to go and have a sit out in the sun because apparently England is hotter than the Bahamas today, which I don't know what the Bahamas is like, but I'm going to drink it in while I can. So I'll looking for love.